Colonial One
by Bard the Kiwi
Summary: Three years into the first Cylon war, the President is dead and Colonial One is crippled. Can Liam Taggart save both the ship and the Colonial Government before the Cylons find them?


Taggart looked back out the window, hoping the demons had gone.

It had been a very tense half hour. News that the FTL had malfunctioned and thrown them out near the rogue gas giant Ragnar hadn't disturbed the passengers nearly as much as the news there was a quartet of Cylon Raiders in the area and were moving in on their location.

Vipers had been launched and managed to destroy two of them. A third – according to rumours he had been hearing from flight attendants – had sustained damaged and crashed into the hangar.

Then came the weapons fire from the forward compartments. Thoughts of Cylons on board Colonial One ran riot through the minds of the passengers, and so began a mass panic that caused a stampede inside the cabin, people pushing and shoving to get to the rear compartments and what Taggart thought could only be a brief salvation.

Taggart had stayed put. As the President's assistant scientific advisor it would be inappropriate for him to contribute to the mayhem.

After a few minutes the weapons fire had ceased, but the last Raider had damaged their engines before the remaining Vipers took it out.

Now Colonial One was stranded.

"Liam Taggart?"

Taggart looked away from the window to see two security officers standing beside him. Near the door to the cabin, four marines stood watching the passengers, each of them shouldering high calibre rifles.

"Yes?"

"Sir, please come with us to the Command office."

The officers turned and began to leave. Taggart didn't need to be told twice.

Once clear of the cabin and in the adjoining corridor, Taggart tried to match pace with the officers.

"Is the President alright? Did… did we really have Cylons on board?"

"You will be briefed in full shortly, sir."

That was it as far as the officer was concerned.

Rounding a corner Taggart saw bullet holes and at least three bodies lying on the floor. Blood stains covered the beautiful painting near the cafeteria entrance, depicting sunset over a temple on Gemenon, the President's home colony.

As they reached the door to the Command office, the security officers broke off, and indicated Taggart should enter by himself.

Stepping into the room, he was unprepared for what lay in front of him. A Cylon Centurion, one of the Gold Commanders that he'd heard about but never actually seen, was lying face down in front of the impressive Virgon Pine desk, which was covered in blood – likely from Colonial service agents attempting to protect the President-

Taggart stopped in his tracks and almost dropped his briefcase. President Andrew Kells, the man he had campaigned with all those years ago on Gemenon, well before the Cylon insurrection and subsequent war, was lying dead in his chair.

"What happened?" asked Taggart. He knew it was a stupid question; the six bullet holes in the President's chest and dead Cylon on the floor gave the game away.

"Frakking Cylons" said a voice behind him.

Taggart turned and saw Mike Daley, Assistant to the President for Colonial Security. "Frakkers crashed one of their Raiders on the flight deck, then escaped and got into the hold. Before we could stop them they broke onto the Executive deck and killed the President."

"Gods…" said Taggart. "Who else did we lose?"

"Wendy, John, seventeen others. Oh and you're senior advisor now."

"What?" said Taggart, feeling his heart sink even lower.

"Yeah" said Mike, glancing at the President's body as it was covered with the Gemenon flag and moved from the room. "We lost Larry too."

Taggart composed himself. "So… have we sent a message to Colonial Two yet?"

"I still haven't heard from-"

"Sir!"

Taggart and Daley turned to see a young intern burst into the room. "We've got big problems, we-"

"Bet you're frakkin' ass we have big problems!" yelled Mike back at him.

"If, er… if you could just…" the poor man stammered, indicating they should follow him.

…

Taggart and Daley entered the CIC of Colonial One, which was a sea of pandemonium. Crewmembers darted between stations, technicians yelled over one another trying to assist with repair & medical teams and all around the room stood marines ready to strike should another Cylon attempt to board the ship.

Taggart could see the Captain standing at the combat table, looking at the twin DRADIS screens above him. By composure alone Taggart could see the Captain held himself responsible for what had happened.

Daley stepped forward. "Jerry, this is Liam Taggart, now chief scientific advisor, Liam, Captain Jerry Harrison."

The men shook hands, though the Captain showed no sign of pleasure in greeting Taggart.

"Chief scientific advisor to whom?" he said, going back to DRADIS. Taggart knew despite what had happened, a random FTL failure could hardly be blamed on anyone.

"Where are we at with contacting Colonial Two?" said Mike, ignoring DRADIS.

"Nowhere. Frakkers took out communications. With that and FTL we're blind, deaf and dumb out here."

"We need to establish a working government ASAP, we can't allow these Cylons to gain the upper hand-"

"Sir, receivers restored" said a lieutenant at communications.

"Good, begin monitoring" said Harrison.

"Captain, I don't mean to alarm you but we need to send a message to Colonial Command as soon as possible-"

Harrison spun on him. "Don't you think I'm aware of that? The Cylons stripped the frak out of the communications array. The dish itself is probably somewhere in Ragnar orbit right now."

"What about Raptors? We have a couple on board, why not jump to one of the star systems and-"

Harrison shook his head. "No, that Cylon Raider slammed into both of them when it crashed, we have nothing that can FTL or communicate in a hurry."

"Frak" said Daley. "Frak FRAK!"

"What about the Cylon Raider?"

Everyone turned and looked at Taggart. Taggart himself wasn't even aware he'd let it slip out before properly thinking about it.

"Are you joking mister?" said Daley. "We need to keep that for the military to tear apart."

"If you want communications that Raider might have something working" said Taggart. "Why not see if we can examine it, reverse engineer-"

"You're serious about this, aren't you?" said Daley, rubbing his hands through his hair. "We've been at war with these things for three years. You're talking 'bout reverse engineering something in a couple of hours, or less?"

"Why not? Colonials built most of their technology, it's not much of a stretch to-"

"Oh frak!"

Everyone looked at the communication technician, who was in shock.

"Sitrep" yelled Harrison.

"Sir, two streams are coming in simultaneously. Cylon attack on Picon just took out six berths at the Queenstown Landing Port and the main terminal. One of the ships berthed was Colonial Two."

"Frak… the vice-President" said Daley.

"There's more sir. We're also hearing of a bombing on Caprica, at the Quorum Arena. 65 dead, including the Speaker of the-"

"Oh double frak!" yelled Daley, slamming his fights on the combat table. "There goes first and second in line to the Presidency. This is a frakking tragedy."

"Like it or not" said Taggart, stepping up to Daley who was now visibly shaking, "I need you to let me into that Raider."

…

Taggart climbed inside the small cabin, making sure not to touch anything he wasn't supposed it. Teams had already been through, making sure no booby traps remained to scuttle Cylon technology before it fell into Colonial hands, but Taggart was cautious.

It didn't take him long to locate the communications console. Tracing cables back to its source on the back wall behind the Command Centurion's chair, Taggart removed a wall panel, revealing the flat rectangular transponder. He gently removed the connectors from the box, disabled the power and removed it from it's cradle.

"Got it yet?"

The voice almost made him drop the transponder.

"Yes Mike, I've got it." Under his breath he added, "kindly knock next time."

Taggart emerged from the Raider to see the remains of one of the Centurions being carted away in a large steel crate. The Raider had smashed through the hangar doors, slide through the flight deck and taken out two Raptors and six Vipers before sliding to a halt at the far end. All three Centurions emerged, although one was quickly taken down as it left the hatch. The other two managed to get into the passenger compartment and blast their way to the Command office, where the lead Centurion had succeeded in killing the President.

The Raider itself was still largely intact, although it's port wing was now a crumpled mess. Taggart thought it could fly again with some maintenance, then threw the thought out as ludicrous.

"How long will it take you?' asked Daley, looking at the box.

"Depends what I find when I crack it open."

…

Two hours later, FTL and communications were still down, but Taggart had summoned Daley to the CIC, hinting he had made 'some success'.

Daley arrived to see Harrison and Taggart surrounding the makeshift device, plugged directly into the communications console on the CIC.

"Is… is that your briefcase?" asked Daley, pointing at the box on the console.

"Yep, tan leather from genuine Aerilon cattle. I cracked the Cylon casing trying to get into it, which caused some of the electronics to fall out, so had to… improvise."

"Tan?" said Daley, "Looks like an orange case to me."

"Orange?" said Taggart, offended.

Harrison rolled his eyes. "Gentlemen, if we can get on."

"Right" said Daley, examining the console. It didn't take long to spot something was missing. "Where's the mic?"

"Some parts of the Cylon transponder I wasn't able to crack, but-"

"Oh so it's frakking useless!" said Daley, throwing his hands up in the air..

"Let me finish, Mary-Lou. Some parts I couldn't access BUT we can trick it by using a pre-recorded message, then all it does is loop like an automated beacon."

"What frakking good is that to us?" said Daley.

"You serve at the pleasure of the President of the Twelve Colonies, remember?" said Harrison. "We are all expendable in this. Primarily we have to get the government back on it's feet, and our rescue is on the back burner."

"You gotta be frakkin-"

"One more outburst like that mister and you'll be thrown in the brig, do I make myself clear?"

Daley stood up to his full diminutive stature. "You can't speak to me like that, I'm the Assistant to the President for-"

"And right now he's dead!" yelled Harrison. "You're out of a job. As of now you, all of your staff, most people on this ship, are unemployed."

Daley still had his game face on but stayed silent. He knew Harrison was right; any subsequent President would have an entirely new staff to assist.

"Anyway…" said Taggart, trying to get back to the matter at hand, "I've set it up so that it can broadcast three messages, and there's a text database for reference. "

"Why?" asked Daley, still not ready to look away from Harrison just yet.

"One message to get the attention of next in command, their reply will dictate which of the remaining two messages are sent, one being 'congratulations, you're now President'."

"And the other being something along the lines of 'thank you for your application but the position has already been filled' I'm guessing?" asked Harrison.

"Yes sir. And the text database is simply for cross referencing the command ID of the officials that respond."

"Good. So… what do we say, exactly?"

Daley thought for a moment. "How about… 'This is an official Colonial government broadcast. The Falcon has fallen. Er… all officers and ministers to respond with administration level authorisation immediately.' Or something like that."

"Falcon has fallen?" asked Taggart.

"President Kells once played for the Fighting Falcon Pyramid team on Gemenon. Trust me, whoever gets that message will respond with what we need."

"Nice."

…

Half an hour later, the message was away successfully, looping every few seconds. Taggart had been checking the systems to make sure there weren't any issues. He was about to take a break when he spotted a green cable plugged into the console, snaking off into the same splitter box as his orange transponder.

"Lieutenant, what is that cable?" he asked the comtech.

"Colonial transponder, used for identification purposes."

Taggart sat back in his chair, hand on his chin, deep in thought. The transponder would be routed through the splitter box, which would feed back to the orange transponder for verification-

"Oh FRAK" he yelled, and lunged forward, yanking the cables from the splitter box. Daley and Harrison both saw Taggart's reaction.

"What the frak are you doing?"

"I had to cut it. We were giving away our position, to everyone."

"What?" yelled Harrison, "how?"

"The transponder has a feedback circuit that helps for identification. Part of it passes through the nav computer. The loop would've thrown our location out with the signal. Everyone now knows where we are."

"Oh frak" yelled Harrison. "Helm, all head full, get us moving."

"All ahead full, aye."

"I sincerely hope only our boys heard us" said Daley.

"Hope they did, cos if not we're gonna be quite a prize" said Taggart.

"What do you mean?"

"Remember I said identification was involved…"

Daley stepped back from the communications console slowly, as if it offended him. "So you're telling me… not only did we just give away our location but we also told them who we are?"

"Yep… sucks to be us right now" said Taggart, knowing his comment was childish and wouldn't go down well.

"DRADIS contact!"

Harrison ran to the combat table and looked up at the screens. "We got company" he said.

"Friendly?" asked Daley.

"No."

Three Cylon Basestars had just jumped into range.

"Action stations, set condition one throughout the ship. Launch all Vipers we have available. Helm alter course, six degrees down bubble. Best speed."

Taggart and Daley moved to the forward window to get out of Harrison's way. To their right, Ragnar's swirling green and black clouds offered little comfort for the death that was chasing them. Taggart was about to speak when a blue flash occurred right in front of them."

"Oh frak no" said Daley.

Before anyone could say anything, a ripple of static bounced through the speakers.

"This is President Jeffrey Wilson to incoming Cylon vessels. Withdraw, or face the wrath of the Colonial military."

Daley looked at Taggart. "Oooh, I like this guy already."

"Wilson, Secretary of Defence" said Targgart, "he's about sixth or seventh in line for the job?"

"Sixth."

"Any change?" asked Harrison.

"No sir, Cylon forces continuing to advance. Raiders have been launched, CBDR."

"Very well" said President Wilson over the speakers. "Cylons… meet our latest weapon."

The officer of the watch checked his DRADIS screen. "Sir, Battlestar Ulysses has launched Vipers."

Harrison smiled and leaned in. "Check your call sign Lieutenant, that's Colonial One now."

As Taggart and Daley looked out the window they could see the twenty small specs heading towards them. As they entered visual range they split into four groups and banked off at high gee forces in readiness for attack. Daley strained his eyes.

"They look different…"

Taggart could see it too. Instead of the boxy design of the standard Viper, these birds were more streamlined, with an overall smaller and faster fuselage, tighter intakes and cannons mounted closer to the hull.

Daley snapped his fingers. "These are the mark twos!"

"Can't be" said Taggart. "I thought they were still in shakedown testing."

"Frak that, they're in the field now. Tear those bastards up!"

In Ragnar orbit, the growing contingent of Vipers poured from the newly arrived Colonial One, tearing into the Raider squadrons that were menacing what was now the government cruiser Porthos, a name the vessel hadn't used in 22 years.

Battle tactics employed by the Cylons against the original Viper variant we no good now; enhanced speed and maneuverability threw the Cylon battle computers into chaos, unexpected attack plans employed by these new pilots and overall superior firepower forced the Cylon Central Nexus to issue a retreat order and spool the FTL drives in the three Basestars.

This didn't stop Colonial One fire a full salvo out of its forward batteries, tearing into the central axis of the nearest Basestar, igniting fuel and ammunition stores and tearing the ship in two. The remaining Basestars jumped away, while the Vipers took up a defensive position around the Porthos as the ship was evacuated.

As the CIC was cleared out, Taggart removed his briefcase from the console and tucked it under his arm. He found Daley standing by a window, looking at the much larger Colonial One drifting close by.

"Wilson's got it right, you know. You put the President in a Battlestar and the Cylons will think twice before they go after him again."

Taggart nodded. "The Administration may come back to a ship like the Porthos eventually, but not until we see an end to hostilities."

"I hope not. Using a 30 year old converted frigate is hardly what I call progress."

Daley saw what Taggart had under his arm. "You're taking that?" asked Daley.

"Sure, why not? Valuable piece of equipment this. Helped save the Presidency."

"Frakking ugly thing."

Taggart smiled at him as both men left the CIC, bound for the transport off the ship. "You know, for a government official, you do swear an awful lot."

…

**49 Years Later**

Minutes earlier, he had just been told he would become the new Chief of Staff for the President. His abilities and attention to detail, not to mention his personal skills, over the past few months had made him invaluable, and now he was being given the chance to go the extra distance.

But he was finding a hard time locating a priest with only 141 passengers on the ship.

After a couple of minutes of pacing, trying not to think of the horrors occurring on the twelve colonies, the flight attendant moved back to the kitchenette towards him, with a woman in tow.

"As you asked, I've found you a Priest. This is Elosha."

"Hello, and thank you for coming. Have you been told anything about… the…"

Elosha smiled a comforting smile back at him. "My son, don't underestimate the power of the human mouth. Everyone in the cabin back there knows what's going on."

"OK… now, we have a ceremony we'd like you to perform. With the attacks on the colonies we're unable to verify the location or condition of President Adar, his cabinet, nor any of the immediate officials or ministers that would normally assume control of-"

"Mr Keikeya, are you admitting to me that Case Orange has been initiated?"

Billy was amazed at Elosha's knowledge of government procedures. "Yes, yes it has."

Elosha leaned past Billy to look through a doorway. Beyond she could see Laura Roslin composing herself as others gathered in the room around her. Elosha reached into her handbag and pulled out a scroll.

"I'll be needing this then" she said, and move past him.

The flight attendant walked up to Billy as Elosha entered the small room and introduced herself.

"So Ms Roslin is gonna be our new President…?" asked the attendant.

"Yeah" said Billy, "in a few moments this ship will become Colonial One. Excuse me, I have to attend this."

Billy walked off, nodding to a few people who immediately stood up around Laura Roslin. In front of her, Elosha unfolded her sacred scrolls parchment.

As the doors closed to the room, the attendant went back to issue drinks to the passengers – emergency ration levels only – to try and keep some sense of calm. As she prepared the drinks, a random thought crossed her mind.

_Case Orange_ she thought to herself, _I wonder how it got that name…?_


End file.
